Sunday, May 10, 2009

Mirroring the Mirror

I spent most of Friday working over at Rob's office, working on the newly restored and remastered version of an old short film I made in college. The film was produced over the course of a single night, with the entire small cast and crew moving all over the college campus to get all the shots we needed. We then cut the movie together at the Villanova TV station, and the movie played on the campus cable channel for a short time. I've always liked the general idea behind the movie, which was based on one of my classes. We were discussing early British romantic-era poetry, and the idea about separate identities and personalities interested me. So I called up some friends, we discussed the idea over dinner, and then spent the Friday night until 2am filming the movie, which you can see at the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8ihtjrdTAg&feature=channel_page

I've always wanted to get the footage out again and go through it with Rob, giving it that digital upgrade that makes it look so much better. Plus, we had a little problem with the tape losing quality, so now the film won't degrade any further over time. Plus, we found some great new music and created some great new title cards for the movie. The title cards make me rather giddy, actually, especially the little detail that we added the "RHP" in the lower portion of the card. Silent movies used to have the studio logo on the cards, and I love that we found that little details and put it on our own cards.

It was fun going back into the archives to work on this film. I was very happy with the original work that I did eight years ago, and I think that we've added nice new touches to that work with our new digital toolbox. We made some effort to edit the clips like the old version, taking the same takes and shots, but we trimmed some scenes down to make the movie shorter and better. The film isn't too much different, but it's much better.

3 comments:

JParis said...
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JParis said...
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JParis said...

(ok, maybe the third time will work) Oh yeah, I had noticed the "RHP" and meant to comment on it. I like the design (the backwards R and two lines for the H). Again, enjoyed the film.